Benitec Biopharma this week announced that it has collaborated with stem cell firm Medistem to treat rheumatoid arthritis in preclinical animal models using their respective technologies.
According to the companies, Benitec's expressed RNAi technology was used to generate dendritic cells that acted as a “tolerogenic vaccine,” blocking the pathological immune response that characterizes arthritis but not affecting normal immune responses.
The findings were reported in the Journal of Translational Medicine.